A utility provider, such as a gas, electricity, or water provider, may have a large number of control, measuring, and sensing devices installed in the field in order to control transmission and distribution of the product, measure, and record product usage, and detect problems. Such devices may include water, gas, or electrical meters, remotely controlled valves, flow sensors, leak detection devices, and the like. The utility provider may utilize various networking technologies, including wired, RF, cellular, Wi-fi, and the like to control remote devices and collect and analyze utility data from a central location. Such systems may be referred to as Advanced Metering Infrastructure (“AMI”) or Advanced Metering Management (“AMM”) systems.
In a typical configuration, an AMI system may comprise a central host capable of connecting via wired and/or wireless networking infrastructures to a number of communication nodes, each node providing network communications for one or more connected metering devices, control devices, sensor devices, or the like. The AMI system may further include data collection hubs, repeaters, gateways, and the like. For example, the network topology of the AMI system be configured in a hybrid-star configuration where intermediary collection hubs communicate directly with the host and with assigned child nodes supported by repeaters and/or “buddy nodes” in the topology.
For some functions, having accurate time synchronization between the various nodes and/or between the nodes and the host may be essential. For example, a water provider may implement a leak detection or condition assessment system on a host that collects acoustic data recorded by acoustic sensors at two or more geographically remote locations and analyzes the acoustic data to detect leaks in the transmission/distribution system and/or determine the integrity of pipe walls. The leak detection or condition assessment system may utilize correlation analysis between the recorded acoustic data from the various locations to detect the presence of a leak or other anomaly and determine its location. However, in order to accurately determine the location of the leak, it is necessary for the acoustic data to be recorded by the leak detection devices at substantially the same time. For example, the timing of the two or more acoustic recordings must be within 15 milliseconds in order for the correlation analysis to identify the location of a leak in a pipe within ±50 ft.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.